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248 Western American Literature Plains Farmer: The Diary of William G. DeLoach, 1914-1964. Edited by Janet M. Neugebauer. (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1991. 367 pages, $39.50.) William DeLoach, Texas plains farmer, faced every test nature and the political climate could devise as he struggled to develop the virgin land for crops that would be the sole livelihood of his growing family. For fifty years he kept a daily diary, probably the most consistent account of its kind, recording the thoughts that occupy a farmer who thinks deeply and asks for his labors only an even break. Few who are hard at such toils have the time and inclination to keep a diary; yet here in simple, unassuming and often deeply affecting lan­ guage is the absorbing tale of a pioneer farmer’s struggles. Editor Janet Neugebauer has woven into the diary’s framework demo­ graphic, geopolitical, and technical expositions allowing valuable overviews to laypersons, historians, and students of agriculture who learn, for example, of cotton’s role in the nation’s agronomy as they follow the work of DeLoach in his cotton fields. World War II’s effect on farming income emerges clearly even as the saddened reader grieves with DeLoach over the loss of his youngest son in that war. Steadily, Neugebauer examines the government’s role in Great Plains farming, how land prices changed, doubled between 1941 and 1945—then doubled again by 1954—and how the young began to be pushed off the land. DeLoach was endlessly plowing and planting, then plotting what to do next after sandstorms, drought, hail, and unfavorable markets took their toll. We learn that he kept abreast of the daily news, that he rarely missed getting to the polls and community meetings, that he treasured his family and assisted his neighbors. He hated war and capital punishment (“legalized murder” he wrote of the Hauptman execution after the Lindbergh trial). He was considerate of animals that worked for him. DeLoach liked picnics, song fests, a rare nip of whiskey, and most forms of human companionship—except for the moments at his diary. The marvelous drawings by Charles Shaw capture varied scenes of farm life and the postures of men and women who live on the Texas plains. This book is splendid in conception and design—a collector’s item. JEAN RITTER-MURRAY Santa Rosa, California Desierto. By Charles Bowden. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991. 225 pages, $18.95.) Charles Bowden, in the prologue to his 1988 work Blue Desert, asks the reader to “Imagine you are on a train highballing through the desert night and out the window conflicting scenes flash across your eyes—a glimpse of moun­ Reviews 249 tain in the moonlight, a murder barely observed through a motel window—and that these experiences jar against each other as the train thunders toward its destination.” That destination is Bowden’s landscape, the greater Southwest. Subsequent writings, Frog Mountain Blues, Mezcal, and Red Line, recover and reexamine this landscape, each work with greater definition, until here in Desierto Bowden’s images achieve the sharpness and clarity of an Ansel Adams print. But Bowden’sframes do not present the pristine landscape of an Adams or a Weston, whose works he views as perfect, but “as sterile as the loins of mules.” Here in Desierto are splendid landscapes, beautiful sunsets, Seri craftsmen and mountain lions. But here too are disquieting figures—killers of tortoises and mountain lions, drug lords and land developers—all dealers, all seeking a piece of the action. Bowden’s frequent juxtaposing of discordant images discredits those who “stare at huge photographs of its (the desert’s) expanse, images cunningly taken by lovers who carefully edit out of their frames all evidence of our own existence in this place.” As the author tells us, “I cannot contain the word (desert) inside tidy borders. The sound rolls out of my mouth and a blur of images and feeling floods me—the lips full on a woman walking her high heels to work, the scent rising off the nape of her neck, the anxiety in an old man’s eyes as he scurries across four lanes of...

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